Southwest, JetBlue September Passenger Surge: A Sign of Rebounding Travel or Shifting Habits?

There were some eye-catching numbers in September traffic reports out this week: Passenger traffic up 10% at one airline. Load factor up 11 points at another.

JetBlue Airways said its September traffic was up 10% — perhaps a sign of economic improvement, or just travelers switching to JetBlue for price or service reasons. JetBlue’s capacity was up 8.6%–bucking the trend of carriers shrinking. Southwest Airlines say its traffic rise an equally impressive 9%, all the more remarkable since Southwest had cut its capacity by 8%. The result: Fuller planes. Southwest’s load factor jumped to nearly 74.7% from 63.4%.

This week’s Middle Seat explores trends in domestic travel and the shifting to low-cost carriers like Southwest and JetBlue, plus regional airlines. The September traffic numbers certainly put an exclamation point on the data. Delta’s domestic mainline traffic was down 5% in September on a capacity cut of 5%. American’s domestic mainline traffic was down 2.6% on a capacity cut of 6.9%. United’s traffic in North America was down a hefty 6.1% on a major capacity decline of 8%.

Of course, airlines are still offering cheap fares to entice people into planes.